10 January 2008

El Chopo to Teotihuacan: Leopards ancient and recently alive

Here is a shot Nina Tahash took on our second visit to El Chopo, the punk goth hippie rasta emo ska hip-hop street market in Mexico City, near Buenavista station. Nina of course felt right at home.

At a stall run by an older, animal skin-obsessed artisan punk, Nina found an almost unbelievable hand-made shoulder bag built around a real, full-size armadillo shell. He also made the bag with leather, snake skin, alligator skin, leopard hide, and feathers. Below, Nina descending into the metro at Guerrero a few blocks from the market, with her new accessory.

And for a final touch of indulgence before returning to our regularly scheduled art-culture-politics blogging, here we are posing with an ancient leopard-snake bust in an off-limits archeological area we had "stumbled" into at the grand pre-Hispanic urban zone of Teotihuacan, just outside of Mexico City. We climbed the Pyramid of the Sun and felt "la energia." *

* More on that later. Reminder: all photos are thumbnails, click for larger views.

Comments

Here is a shot Nina Tahash took on our second visit to El Chopo, the punk goth hippie rasta emo ska hip-hop street market in Mexico City, near Buenavista station. Nina of course felt right at home.

At a stall run by an older, animal skin-obsessed artisan punk, Nina found an almost unbelievable hand-made shoulder bag built around a real, full-size armadillo shell. He also made the bag with leather, snake skin, alligator skin, leopard hide, and feathers. Below, Nina descending into the metro at Guerrero a few blocks from the market, with her new accessory.

And for a final touch of indulgence before returning to our regularly scheduled art-culture-politics blogging, here we are posing with an ancient leopard-snake bust in an off-limits archeological area we had "stumbled" into at the grand pre-Hispanic urban zone of Teotihuacan, just outside of Mexico City. We climbed the Pyramid of the Sun and felt "la energia." *

* More on that later. Reminder: all photos are thumbnails, click for larger views.